23 June 2013

Back to the Mines

I had the great pleasure this weekend to make some new friends on a remote farm in southwest Wisconsin. Three families, at least two dozen children, houses built by hand from wood harvested and milled from the property. My friend DMac summarized it thus: "It's like going to camp: coffee, alcohol, meat, pancakes." A thoroughly Catholic mix.

So after a hearty dose of poetry, bare feet, sheep, two-stroke exhaust, pouring rain, steaming piles of cow manure, Iowa skinnies, a long porch that's cool in the sun and warm at night, barn swallows, did I mention more children than I could count?, a Wisconsin earth goddess and a Celtic poet...

... Kant, Schleiermacher, and Möhler are here waiting for me, right where I left them.